There are still plenty of things he won't tell her.
He won't break her heart. Once was enough. Yet the truth is the truth, and no one can escape from it. So better than lie, he would rather keep quiet about it and let the other people believe what they wanted to believe.
The others, of course, know nothing of his real reasons. They believe that, once before, he had chosen to remain Gym Leader for her. To get close to her. To rekindle whatever past relationship.
In a way, they weren't entirely wrong. He had wanted, and tried to restart their relationship. Only that this time it would merely be platonic.
Because.
Because it simply wouldn't work otherwise. It hadn't worked the first time, when they hadn't quite figured it out yet. He had thought over it and asked himself many times, and he had consulted Steven as well.
"Are sure you'll be alright with it?" he had asked anxiously. "I mean, you aren't the least jealous?"
"Why should I be?" Steven had smiled disarmingly. "What's there to be jealous of?"
He was glad and extremely relieved. Because, in a way, trying to friends again with Winona was more of an apologetic gesture, an apology for the failure the first time round, an apology for being unable to go further than a friendship, an apology for a fact she hasn't yet realised.
A fact he hopes she will never realise.
So that was the arrangement. The arrangement which went ahead and succeeded, partially. She didn't have, and wouldn't ever know the truth.
But now, things have changed. Steven is gone, and nothing seems to make sense at all. He is to take over as Champion and he has no idea how she feels about it. Upset? Unwilling? Or apathetic because she already knows the truth?
Does she know? Will she ever know?
Anyhow, they will both have to live with it, with their losses: his the loss of his lover, hers the loss of what she ought to know.
